Visits
"On Monday, October 20, consumer advocate and Presidential candidate
Ralph Nader will hold a rally in Bagdad Theatre and Pub, 3702 SE
Hawthorne Blvd. Portland, OR 97214. He will speak about the Wall St.
Bailout, single-payer health care, the Iraq War, the environment, and
the state of the Presidential debates from which he was excluded."

Tuesday, May 13, at 7:30 p.m. - Ralph Nader at Benson High School in
Portland, OR.

Qualifying for the BallotPRESS RELEASE from the Oregon Peace
Party

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AUGUST 22, 2008
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
GREG KAFOURY 971/563-4139; greg@thepeaceparty.net

OREGON
PEACE PARTY NOMINATES NADER/GONZALEZ

The Ralph Nader campaign announced today that the Secretary of State
has recognized the creation of a new party in Oregon, the Peace Party,
and party activists announced the nomination of Ralph Nader and Matt
Gonzalez for President and Vice-President.

The party was created by the gathering of more than 24,000 valid
signatures throughout the state.

"McCain is a virtual clone of President Bush on domestic policy, and
on foreign policy he is even more of a warmonger," said Greg Kafoury,
one of the leaders of the Nader campaign. "Obama has moved so far to
the right since Hillary Clinton dropped out that the campaign has
degenerated into trivia and personal attacks. Only Nader stands for
full military and corporate withdrawal from Iraq, reductions in the
bloated defense budget, single-payer health care, and a living wage for
all Americans. Historically, small parties and independent candidacies
have been the birthplace of progress. Third parties led the struggle
against slavery, for women's suffrage, for Social Security and workers'
rights. The job of the major parties is to adopt the best of these
ideas. Ballot obstacles for small parties and their exclusion from the
presidential debates has prevented the system from regenerating. The
grip of the corporate media and the dominant corporate parties has kept
the American people from solving a single major social problem in the
last 40 years."

Nader is at 6% nationally in the latest CNN poll, and a recent Fox
poll found that 14% of voters would support Nader if they felt he was
competitive. "If Nader is included in the presidential debates, we
could have a genuine three-way race," said Kafoury.

Nader will hold a major rally in Denver on August 27th during the
Democratic convention, and a later rally during the Republican
convention. The focus of the national campaign is to expand the debates
to include Nader and perhaps former Congressman Bob Barr, the
Libertarian candidate.

Those interested in the campaign can contact the law office of
Kafoury and McDougal at (503) 224-2647, or visit VoteNader.org.

This year's Peace Party signature drive avoided the type of ballot
access sabotage that kept Nader off the Oregon ballot 4 years ago.
Then, Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury (D) made the ballot a
Nader-free zone by inventing and applying, retroactively and with no
notice, a series of unwritten rules, never before applied to a
candidate petition drive, and by giving the Nader campaign defective
instructions on petition sheet numbering that his office later seized
upon to disqualify more than 15% of all signatures Nader submitted for
that "reason" alone. Petition circulators were confronted with letters
from lawyers, threatening them with long prison terms and fines of
$100,000 or more, and some circulators were even visited at their homes
by persons carrying that message. The chief judge of the Marion County
Circuit Court concluded that Bradbury had violated Oregon law, but the
Oregon Supreme Court decided that he had acted within his authority in
retroactively applying his unwritten rules. "The Nader signature drive
in 2004 complied with every written rule," said attorney Dan Meek. "It
is impossible to comply with unwritten rules made up after the
signatures have been submitted." The 2004 experience is described in an
article at Counterpunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/meek09282004.html.

Ed.
Note: Because Nader received more than 1% of the statewide
Oregon vote in the presidential election, the Peace Party was qualified
to place its candidates on all ballots for partisan office in Oregon
through the November 2010 general election.